All the Pretty Horses

man nodded at the gray and malignant dawn. He moved his leveled hand slowly before him. You see that? he said.
    Yessir.
    He shook his head. I despise the wintertime. I never did see what was the use in there even bein one.
    He looked at John Grady.
    You dont talk much, do you? he said.
    Not a whole lot.
    That’s a good trait to have.
    It was about a two hour drive to Brady.
    They drove through the town and the man let him out on the other side.
    You stay on Eighty-seven when you get to Fredericksburg. Dont get off on Two-ninety you’ll wind up in Austin. You hear?
    Yessir. I appreciate it.
    He shut the door and the man nodded and lifted one hand and the car turned around in the road and went back. The next car by stopped and he climbed in.
    How far you goin? the man said.
    Snow was falling in the San Saba when they crossed it and snow was falling on the Edwards Plateau and in the Balcones the limestone was white with snow and he sat watching out while the gray flakes flared over the windshield glass in the sweep of the wipers. A translucent slush had begun to formalong the edge of the blacktop and there was ice on the bridge over the Pedernales. The green water sliding slowly away past the dark bankside trees. The mesquites by the road so thick with mistletoe they looked like liveoaks. The driver sat hunched up over the wheel whistling silently to himself. They got into San Antonio at three oclock in the afternoon in a driving snowstorm and he climbed out and thanked the man and walked up the street and into the first cafe he came to and sat at the counter and put the satchel on the stool beside him. He took the little paper menu out of the holder and opened it and looked at it and looked at the clock on the back wall. The waitress set a glass of water in front of him.
    Is it the same time here as it is in San Angelo? he said.
    I knew you was goin to ask me somethin like that, she said. You had that look.
    Do you not know?
    I never been in San Angelo Texas in my life.
    I’d like a cheeseburger and a chocolate milk.
    Are you here for the rodeo?
    No.
    It’s the same time, said a man down the counter.
    He thanked him.
    Same time, the man said. Same time.
    She finished writing on her pad and looked up. I wouldnt go by nothin he said.
    He walked around town in the snow. It grew dark early. He stood on the Commerce Street bridge and watched the snow vanish in the river. There was snow on the parked cars and the traffic in the street by dark had slowed to nothing, a few cabs or trucks, headlights making slowly through the falling snow and passing in a soft rumble of tires. He checked into the YMCA on Martin Street and paid two dollars for his room and went upstairs. He took off his boots and stood them on the radiator and took off his socks and draped them over the radiator beside the boots and hung up his coat and stretched out on the bed with his hat over his eyes.
    At ten till eight he was standing in front of the boxoffice in his clean shirt with his money in his hand. He bought a seat in the balcony third row and paid a dollar twenty-five for it.
    I never been here before, he said.
    It’s a good seat, the girl said.
    He thanked her and went in and tendered his ticket to an usher who led him over to the red carpeted stairs and handed him the ticket back. He went up and found his seat and sat waiting with his hat in his lap. The theatre was half empty. When the lights dimmed some of the people in the balcony about him got up and moved forward to seats in front. Then the curtain rose and his mother came through a door onstage and began talking to a woman in a chair.
    At the intermission he rose and put on his hat and went down to the lobby and stood in a gilded alcove and rolled a cigarette and stood smoking it with one boot jacked back against the wall behind him. He was not unaware of the glances that drifted his way from the theatregoers. He’d turned up one leg of his jeans into a small cuff and from time to time he leaned and tipped into this receptacle the soft white ash of his cigarette. He saw a few men in boots and hats and he nodded gravely to them, they to him. After a while the lights in the lobby dimmed again.
    He sat leaning forward in the seat with his elbows on the empty seatback in front of him and his chin on his forearms and he watched the play with great intensity. He’d the notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there